


Something seen

by Kyzy



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Parental fluff, minor gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:47:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21577063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyzy/pseuds/Kyzy
Summary: “M...Master?”Shieda offered quietly, voice trembling with the surge of emotion. Ever alert, Zed gave a nod to encourage him to continue. It took a few moments of fidgeting upon the spot, looking about the empty meditation room with glazed eyes almost unable to meet his elder’s.“... Can… can I... hold you?”
Comments: 2
Kudos: 49





	Something seen

**Author's Note:**

> Parental fluff because I love one ninja man and his son. ;u;  
> Warnings in tags. Baby death below.

For some strange reason, he couldn’t stop those tears from falling.

The rock in his throat couldn’t be swallowed, it was as if he was filled with jagged debris that scraped against everything inside him with every shallow breath he took-- but no noise ever escaped his lips, no admittance of this pain. His master was looming ahead over his bowed form, Zed’s shadow so large in size that it captured the boys body in darkness and then some. To Kayn, knees against the floor and hands folded rigidly in his lap, crying in front of the stoic man he called a master was a savage display of weakness that he knew he would regret when he was dismissed to bed… but the fluttering, the closing and the smearing of his eyes against a sore, barely covered shoulder did not stop his body from weeping so.

“... There was a baby?”

Like his blades through the darkness, Zed’s voice sliced through the silence that was barely tinted with the child’s own uneven breathing. 

“Y-Yes, master.”

The pictures stuck in his mind like arrows to the prey, the remnants of an Noxian raid savagely tearing through the village with axes and swords bigger than their wielders. People, dead people, were nothing strange to the eleven year old war-child. Contorted flesh and bent backs, jutting arms and lifeless eyes… they were almost common-place now. Though they oft came back to visit him in his nightmares Kayn could wander past a battlefield without the stirrings of something deep down within him-- but a child? Not another like he, no, they too had become victims of their own weakness within Noxus’s training grounds-- younger. More fragile. More innocent.

The baby had been covered in cloth beside her mother, the fabric of the patterned blanket shifting ever so slightly as a hand weakly moved beneath it but once. Shieda, having only been there to deliver a scroll to a village now ravaged, had not had empathy in his heart when he lifted the cloth from her tiny form; only curiosity. That curiosity slowly turned like the tide, collapsing in on itself into something far stranger. Blood. Blood and torn flesh, blank eyes, the death rattle of something barely able to breathe--

“Kayn.”

Zed’s usual biting tone knocked the wide-eyed young one out of the haze of the past and back into the cold and quiet present. Without looking up the youth knew that there would be honey-yellow eyes blankly bearing down upon him with... disappointment. Acolytes of the Shadow order weren’t supposed to cry like babies themselves, they were murderers, protectors, warriors and the thought conjured up images of the others finding out; how they’d laugh. Cocky but brilliant, even at such a young age he was not without his sneers and taunts towards the other children he trained along with. They would be sure to return his cruelty tenfold upon him now, when they knew, when they _knew_ \--

“M-Master, p-please do not t-tell anyone else.”

The words tumbled from his lips faster than his brains ability to stop them, immediately glancing up to meet the steely eyes of the shadow-master. His own expression was skewed, flushed, strands of his hair stuck to soft cheeks. He forced whatever strength he had left into his voice,

“I-I do not want them t-to know I cried.”

“About?”

“A-About?”

“What are you crying _about_? You only told me there was a baby, Kayn.”

Zed observed the further constricting of small pupils, the pressing of his jaw against itself and the way his fingers wrung themselves tight against the cloth of his pants and deepened that frown that was always so firmly upon his lips. He was a monster, not a father. That pleading look in the child's eyes were yearning for _something_ that he could not seek in his masters still form, in the neutral lines of his expression and yet… deep down in the rotting abyss that he regarded as a home for his heart, memories of himself and Shen playing among the fields gave warmth to the space behind his ribs. That look, that pitiful look of a boy lost… it got to him.

Perhaps he was still human after all.

Effortlessly, noiselessly, the leader of the Shadow order made his way before his young pupil and settled himself down into a cross legged sit with piercing eyes fluttering closed. No sigh, no measure of annoyance, cautious and sturdy. Words would come after a pregnant pause, the masters ears filled with the gentle huffs and scuffs of his apprentices breath.

“We are at war. Sometimes, there will be sights and sounds that pierce the soul, body and mind, no matter how much armor you wear-- and that is simply the natural way of the world. You are mortal.”

“Is-- is it my s-soul that’s hurting?”

“No,” Zed replied quietly, finally peering through his bangs to look at the young apprentice with eyes a touch softer than they always were, perhaps the softest that Shieda had ever seen them. “It is your heart, grieving for something lost.”

Kayn’s immediate reaction, childish (and fitting) as it was, was to disobey the neutral stance that he had been attempting to hold in favor for pressing first the tips of his fingers against his semi-bare chest, sliding them outwards until his palm was pressed against his heart. Ah, yes… the pain was here. So violent was its racing that the apprentice didn’t know how he did not notice it before, the feeling of tragedy squeezing it tightly like a snake coiling ‘round its dinner. It reminded him, with every beat, that somehow he was still alive when others were not-- that by some celestial power Shieda still retained that ability to cry. He could weep, laugh, run, sleep, for he was not a baby quivering against a cloth half strewn about him… it was a privilege, was it not? Still alive amongst the ashes of war, still alive despite the crushing of bone and flesh under the heel of an advancing enemy, and he was going to fight so that… those who could not, those who lay lifeless in fields or homes afar would not have died for nothing. That was his resolve.

That was _their_ resolve.

The quiet master had been observing the star-gazing child with interest, watching the etchings of emotion swim in and out of his unfocused gaze, remembering times long ago where he had been able to so easily let expression wander about his features. Kayn understood. He had seen their plight in another light, a gruesome, red-hued light that had the intensity of the sun above-- Zed himself had once lingered in it so long that his skin had begun to burn. It had hurt then. It still hurt _now._

“M...Master?”

Shieda offered quietly, voice trembling with the surge of emotion. Ever alert, Zed gave a nod to encourage him to continue. It took a few moments of fidgeting upon the spot, looking about the empty meditation room with glazed eyes almost unable to meet his elder’s.

“... Can… can I... hold you?”

The first thing that entered the ninja’s head was that it should have been _the other way around_. Violently and defensively he mentally argued that he didn’t need to be held and hadn’t for the longest time, always quite keen to escape Shen’s grapple-hugs in his youth. A snarky retort had begun to form in his mouth before he remembered he was not only talking to a child, but to one who had no inkling presumably of what that sort of affection even felt like; what a fool, to ask him, he who could barely tolerate a shoulder pat without flinching. Kayn had peers, he had other kids to ask of this, other adults even. And yet… that question was hanging in the air between them both like a cloud looming overhead. 

Zed, with his stoic expression crumbling ever so _slightly_ , was not so _selfish_. It naturally came as a command, his arm raised ever so slightly.

“Come here.” 

The softest _oof_ escaped the large man as Kayn suddenly sprang forth from his position to collide with his masters body in a desperate and innate need to find comfort in the ring that made up the assassin's arms-- small hands grasped at his shirt, legs folded against his crossed ones, the long strands of the young ones fly-away hair grazing the chords of his throat. The small body had folded against him in a way that made him almost indistinguishable from his own, the child but a mess of cloth, skin, dirt and eyes that had grown wild beneath his bangs, moon-like and almost search-like in their flickering. It was surprisingly natural the way his thick arm curled about Kayn’s back in the fleeting semblance of a hug… Zed thought, with some amusement, that Shen’s teachings had not left him yet. 

In those arms… it was even easier than before to feel the world begin to fracture and crumble again, easier for the terrible droplets of water to form again at the corners of his surprised eyes. Waves came and came again to crash against the dam that was composed of his will and soon enough they conquered, that baby, that crumpled cloth and his own life-- the rock was gone and Shieda felt _empty_ now as his face pressed fast to his masters shirt so that he could _weep_ without eyes upon him. No longer did he care if the others knew, no longer did he care if they looked down upon him, the child who wielded a sickle had seen something that had brought him gasping to his knees before the strongest assassin in the land… and that was all right.

Because he was mortal, just like his master, whose heartbeat was soft and slow against his cheek. Quivering, nails driving themselves against the folds of the assassins clothes, Kayn found that he could finally answer his elder’s question.

“T-The baby… i-i-it was _dead_ …” Came his minuscule voice rising from below, Zed’s eyes upon the wall, half-lidded and undisturbed. That hold he had upon the child drew him but a touch closer.

“... I know, Kayn… I know.”


End file.
